Investigation of the Flow Around Two Interacting Ship-Like Sections

Abstract

This paper reports calculations of three-dimensional (3D) unsteady cross flow over two ship sections in close proximity and compares the results with measurements. The ship sections have different breadth and draft conditions which represent typical situations in a ship-to-ship marine operation in a cross current. The behavior of the vortex-shedding around the two different ship hull sections is investigated numerically by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. For the two sections, simulations are done for Reynolds number Re = 68,000, Froude number Fr = 0.25, and Re = 6800, Fr = 0.025 by using the dynamic Smagorinsky large eddy simulation (LES) turbulence model. The simulations are performed by using the software ansysfluent and the numerical results are compared with particle image velocimetry (PIV) results taken from the literature. The hydrodynamic forces acting on the two ship sections are predicted by numerical simulations and interaction effects between the two ships are evaluated.